O2 reinforced its position as Britain’s biggest mobile phone company yesterday when it reported a healthy Christmas quarter, adding 338,500 new customers in the last three months of last year as well as 63,000 broadband users.
But then it warned that such good times may not last. O2, which has 21.3 million customers, said that the rate of growth in the UK could slow this year because of economic uncertainty. Matthew Key, chief executive of Telefónica Europe, which includes O2, said: “Do I expect the trends [of growth] in the UK to continue? Yes, but the UK market is probably the most difficult to call. Will it continune accelerating at the rate it has done? Probably not.”
Germany, Europe’s largest market in terms of population, looks set to become a stronger growth market for O2 over the year, he said.
O2’s revenue growth in the UK, excluding the impact of cuts to wholesale rates enforced by Ofcom, rose by 8 per cent in the fourth quarter, boosted by its army of smartphone users. Mr Key said that the company had five million smartphone users in the UK, including two million iPhone owners, who generated £650 million of data revenue last year. “This is now a big business for us,” he said.
He added that despite problems with its network and the ending of its exclusive deal to sell the iPhone in the UK, O2 is outperforming its rivals in signing up customers for Apple’s popular handset. “Clearly Vodafone and Orange volume is incremental to what we’re doing,” Mr Key said.
The surge in customers over Christmas has raised eyebrows, because the rate at which customers are signing up to new contracts suggests that the mobile market is growing again. Orange and T-Mobile, which expect to win European approval for a merger in Britain on Monday, as well as Virgin Media reported strong customer growth in the final quarter of last year.
Vodafone turned around its performance over the Christmas period. Mr Key said that mobile phone networks had added a combined total of 1.4 million customers over Christmas in the UK. “That doesn’t pass the sense test,” he said.
News Source:- http://business.timesonline.co.uk
<< Back to news...